Iranian channel reminds the world of the Dresden massacre . I wonder why America keeps wanting to overthrow Iran
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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I don't see why anyone would think that it does.
Both the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Land Warfare Convention did exist. These however deal mostly with treatment of soldiers and not civilians, is my understanding. This is also why mass murder of civilians is technically not a 'war crime', but a 'crime against humanity'. Correct me if you know better.
Dude... C'mon man.
Whatever 'conscience' countries have, they have because they don't want to get bad press.
There's no evidence that these kooks actually want nukes, rather than the ability to get nukes. Also, I know of no terrorist group in Syria supplied by Iran, while there are plenty supplied by the US. All the rest is true. That said, it's nothing the US doesn't do, and the US does much worse - like blow up European infrastructure.
Would I mind if the Iranian regime is overthrown? Yes. But only for as long as they are supplying drones to Russia - which is actually the only reason the West dislikes Iran suddenly.
It's corruption and hypocrisy all the way down in the West.
Like you say, those were basically for POWs at the time, and the USSR/Germany/Japan ignored them, though the Allies followed them and Germany generally respected the rules for Allies POWs.
No rules of war or treaties cover strategic bombing, instead, it's a cultural and social taboo mediated by the international press and their influence on democratic politicians.
The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, more commonly referred to as the Fourth Geneva Convention. This was in 1949 after WW2. It bans violence and other things against civilians, prisoners, the wounded, etc.
So? All a conscience is, is the "bad press" inside your own mind. All goodness is, is your choice to refrain from selfish/malicious acts based on your own higher principles. Who cares if the press acts as the conscience of western politicians? The point is that the West has one. Russia and China do not.
But I also reject your worldview that Western politicians are all sociopaths and lack any internal consciences. Of course they have consciences, and limit themselves regardless of the press. We can see this by seeing how different politicians acted differently. Nixon was far more willing to bomb civilians than other presidents like Johnson or Carter, even in the face of press criticism.
You don't spend enormous time, money, and bring sanctions on yourself with lots of nuclear program facilities, unless your goal is to get nukes. You don't pay a high price for something you don't want. You don't point to a 4th year college senior and say "there's no evidence he wants a degree, he just wants to have the ability to get a degree". No dude, he clearly wants a degree.
Hezbollah
Nah, the drone supply is a really minor, trifling thing compared to the much bigger problems with Iran.
The drone attacks don't even work anymore. The West started to supply Ukraine with a lot of air defenses, and after a few months, almost all the drones get shot down now.
The drone strikes were highly successful in October, a bit less successful in November with about 70% intercepted, and even less successful in December. The attack on Feb 9/10 had an 86% shoot down rate.
The latest attack last night caused no power outages at all.
It's a failed strategy. Sure, it forced the West to waste more money than otherwise on gearing up Ukraine's air defenses to a degree that otherwise would not have been necessary, but there is no evidence that this caused a reduction in other supplies. To the contrary, Russian attacks on civilians only caused military aid to ramp up to much higher levels than we saw in the 1st 9 months of the war. So the aid increased, the capabilities increased, and Russia failed to actually disrupt Ukraine's power grid for any significant length of time. The strategy backfired.
Crap. So we're screwed. Because the "international press" is corrupt, as are supposedly democratic politicians.
Conscience is internal. If it's the bad press they fear, it's not internal.
Because you have a very naive understanding of politics. They wouldn't get to that position if they weren't sociopaths, at least, the chances would be close to nil and they wouldn't get anything done. DeSantis? Sociopath. He'd order the death of half the human population if it would get him into office. And thank God for it, because he'd be a sure loser otherwise.
Different politicians calculate their interests differently, but for none of them is "civilian casualties" per se a consideration. Perhaps the bad press is, and Nixon cared less about bad press than Carter.
I think it makes perfect sense. Having the capability to quickly get a nuke gets them all the benefits without the associated costs of being even more of an international pariah. I do think they made a mistake, but now it's difficult for them to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
That's Lebanon.
And you're using $300,000 missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones. Seems pretty cost-effective to me.
Please, let's not pretend that the corrupt West cares about 'civilians' as anything more than propaganda. They sure as hell didn't care about Azerbaijan butchering Armenians, as you acknowledged.
Press is absolutely internal to the nation state.
Idk how you can interact with a significant number of people and actually believe this. I guess this must be a very russian way of thinking designed to normalize acceptance of its own leaders behaving that way.
They have nothing until they detonate a test like Pakistan or North Korea did, and at that point they have everything they want, as proven by North Korea and Libya, as soon as you reach the finish line, no one will touch you. They might be waiting until they can get a number of nukes, though, not just 1, because if they only have 1 or 2 they are vulnerable to Israel suddenly bombing the shit out of them with Saudi assistance in response to their test.
Hezbollah has been deployed as military units in Syria from the early days of the civil war. They are the major conduit of Iran's aid to Assad, since they're an Iranian proxy.
Sometimes. Russia also fires some very expensive cruise missiles in the mix, it isn't all Iranian drones. Ukraine also using some very low cost interceptors like German Gepards. Even not being cost effective though doesn't matter, since the West has a combined GDP over 20x that of Russia.
But in the longer term you are right. Modern air defenses are not optimized against extremely cheap missiles like the Shahed 136/Geran-2. Russia is doubling down on the mass production of the Shahed 136 in Yelabuga. Presumably Russia will be able to produce thousands of missiles per month and saturate defenses, eventually.
But the attacker always loses these wars of economic attrition against any prepared defender.
Shooting down the Shahed 136 with missiles is a non-starter because you can't make a missile cheap enough since the Shahed's extremely low requirements mean it can be far cheaper than any interceptor. Guns are also non-starters because their short range means you need far too many of them to cover an area as large as Ukraine. They might work for targets getting shot at a lot like Zaporizhzhia, but you can't provide comprehensive coverage. Using aircraft is also a non-starter since the cost from accidents and wear and tear alone are too high. You could use cheaper prop planes like COIN aircraft, but at that point there's a better solution:
The answer is obvious: you kill the Shahed 136 with smaller, cheaper drones. The drone interceptors do not need to be expended, either. They can simply hover above the Shahed and fire a payload of shotgun shells into it, or attach a satchel charge to it. They could also ram it, but since the Shahed is so slow and flies so straight, you don't need to waste your drone to bring it down.
But this system does not yet exist, and it should be developed immediately. Plenty of drones already exist, but you'd need a drone command point which is networked into the air defense network, and which can control a dozen or more drones at a time to cover a wide area of 20-30km. You can have smaller, cheaper shorter range drones pre-positioned on likely approach routes to blunt saturation attacks.
I don't think Russia will get production up in time to make any significant difference, but I hope our military leaders have enough brains to recognize that they need a new weapon to defeat enemy drones in general, and it needs to be tested and deployed sooner not later.
It's not internal to the individual. If you do not do something to avoid bad press, you have an external and not an internal motivation, so you're definitely not moral.
Every leader acts in this way. Yes, understanding geopolitics in any way makes it rather difficult to interact with normies who just believe what the TV tells them. The fact that Westerners are brainwashed into believing that their sociopathic leaders are the GOOD GUYS is a testimony to Western propaganda, and not anything else.
I see you have still not read The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution. Try it, I think you will like it.
Of course it matters. Who was it who said that he lost all respect for Napoleon once he realized how difficult it is to fight with a coalition? Every government has its own priorities, and even your government cannot control its puppets in Europe 100%, because they fear that if they let their people starve and freeze too much, they're going to have a bad time.
You forget that Russia's economy is many times larger than that of that corrupt puppet shithole non-country. And the West's blood money will eventually lessen or cease. Like Obama said: Russia cares more about Ukraine than the US and will therefore always maintain escalatory dominance.
The Shaheds cost something like $10,000. I'll be impresed if you can get a drone cheaper than that one which is also capable of taking it out.
Eh, you said 'cheap', which means that Raytheon isn't going to profit from it. That means that it's not happening. The whole point of these wars is to steer taxpayer money into the pockets of Raytheon and other merchants of death, as well as kickbacks and bribes for politicians, like literal Raytheon employee Lloyd Austin.